NB: America’s religious fanatics have converted the Old Testament into a title deed; Jesus into a bloodthirsty warrior; Christianity into an instrument of the arms industry; and compassion for humanity into obscurantist nationalism and narcissism. To assist them in this endeavour, the US Supreme Court is functioning as a Catholic theocracy. In a word, religion has been subordinated by ideology, this is helped along by the fact that its political system is in permanent election mode, for one institution or another. An army of semi-literate bigots and racists is now runnning God’s Own Country. God help us.
The USA has become the pre-eminent instigator of global conflict and warfare. Fortunately more of its people are beginning to understand this, and vibrant civil protest has erupted. Let us hope they can rein in the monster. But I’m not holding my breath. DS
By John Blake
When most people contemplate the future of America’s conflict with Iran, they hunt for clues in grainy satellite photos, statements from military analysts and President Trump’s social media posts. But when scholar Diana Butler Bass considers what could happen next, her thoughts turn toward another group she says is now thinking more about prophecy than politics.
She recalls warnings from her childhood about the rise of an Antichrist, stories about weeping mothers clutching their empty blankets after their babies were suddenly “Raptured” to heaven and paintings of an angry Jesus leading armies of angels to an Armageddon-like, final battle in modern-day Israel.
Those stories terrified and thrilled Bass when she heard them growing up in a White evangelical church in the 1970s. It was a time when the end always seemed near, and books like the bestseller “The Late Great Planet Earth” warned Christians to gird their loins for a period of Great Tribulation and prepare for Jesus’ triumphant return to Jerusalem.
Bass, a prominent, progressive religious author who hosts a popular Substack newsletter called “The Cottage,” no longer believes those stories. Yet when she considers why the US struck three nuclear facilities in Iran this month and what could happen next, she now offers a prophecy of her own: Bombing Iran will reinforce Trump’s status as God’s “Chosen One” and Israel as His chosen nation among many of the President’s White evangelical supporters.
Many of these supporters dismiss the dangers of a larger war, she tells CNN, because such a clash would mean the world is approaching the “end times” — a series of cataclysmic events ushering in the Second Coming of Christ and the rise of Israel as the fulfillment of biblical prophecies….
https://edition.cnn.com/2025/06/29/us/iran-israel-evangelicals-prophecy-cec
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Trump’s Christian Fascists and the War on Palestine
Homosexuality is wrong because the Bible says so” etc., etc.
The Battle for the Soul of Judaism: Tribalism, Amalek and Axial Age Universalism of Isaiah
‘Christian nationalism’ in American politics: the Republican hotline to Jesus
The American Christian Right’s Flirtation with Political Violence and Far-Right Extremism
Alex Ross: How American Racism Influenced Hitler / The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law
After the truth-shower 